


new world in my view

by sarahmonious



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Gen, Hurt Peter, Hurt Peter Parker, Identity Reveal, On the Run, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker Whump, Peter Parker has PTSD, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Spider-Man: Far From Home, Post-Spider-Man: Far From Home Mid-Credits Scene, Quentin Beck's Illusions, Spider-Man: Far From Home (Movie)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:20:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23773741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahmonious/pseuds/sarahmonious
Summary: He was being accused as a murderer. A traitor. As far as they could piece together, he was a former Avenger gone rogue. Maybe they thought Spider-Man had become unhinged after Thanos and the Blip. Maybe they thought he needed to be put down, like a rabid animal.Peter groans out a breath, hunching over, trying not to have a panic attack.Gotta keep moving. Keep moving!Picks up right where the Spider-Man: Far From Home mid-credit scene left off. Peter is unmasked and on the run, trying to figure out his next moves. After attempting to diffuse a situation, things go from bad to worse as he finds not one, but two groups of people on his trail out for his blood. His former rivals from Germany might have a different take on the situation, though.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Peter Parker & Sam Wilson
Comments: 30
Kudos: 224





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey hey hey boy what a pandemic, huh. I got laid off so I decided to embark on a guilty pleasure? Of sorts? Would love to see the end of FFH melded together with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier speculation, which will never happen, so why not write it myself! I think it would go... a little something... like this.

His heartbeat pounds in his ears as the crowd below grows more restless and agitated. Colors blur through his suit’s HUD. All the while, Jameson’s voice rattles on in perfect surround sound around Penn Station like nails on a chalkboard.

“Go!” he hears MJ distantly say again. “Get out of here!”

He wants to swing down and pluck her from the crowd, but every muscle feels frozen. Or does, until a large Altoid tin comes sailing at his head.

Obscenities and incredulous questions rise in volume and, oh God – there’s so many phones. Livestreaming his exact location in real time, because they all know who he is now, _they all know, everyone knows_ —

He lifts an arm and shoots off a web, not even paying attention where it lands, all focus on MJ’s panicked face moving backwards through the crowd surging on him. Peter wants desperately to apologize, to say goodbye, anything, but self-preservation kicks in, and he swings an avenue away.

He keeps swinging.

The combo of fear and desperation is mind numbing, so he uses it, falls back on instinct, just _run, run, run_ trying to outpace the shiver up his spine of being followed.

_Helicopter_ , he thinks, ducking behind a large HVAC unit on top of a mid-rise building, hearing the whirring blades from fifteen, maybe seventeen blocks away. His mouth is dry. No way that could be for him. Could it? In the grand scheme of things after the Blip, that wouldn’t seem like a proper allocation of limited resources, but…

But….

He was being accused as a murderer. A traitor. As far as they could piece together, he was a former Avenger gone rogue. Maybe they thought Spider-Man had become unhinged after Thanos and the Blip. Maybe they thought he needed to be put down, like a rabid animal.

Peter groans out a breath, hunching over, trying not to have a panic attack.

_Gotta keep moving. Keep moving!_

His brain somehow reminds him to use the web fluid sparingly, so he jumps from building to building as best he can.

“Karen,” he gasps out in a flash of remembrance. “Karen, I need to find somewhere completely deserted, like no one around for at least a few blocks, more if you can find it.”

“Hi, Peter,” she says, voice no different than any other day of the week. “Of course.” She pauses. “May is calling. Would you like to answer?”

“No,” he answers, piecing together the information that Karen is displaying in his HUD. Manhattan is straight out of the question. Where is he now? Close to Washington Square Park by the looks of it. He’ll run out of taller buildings way too soon.

“You currently have 43 missed calls, 38 voicemails, and 81 text messages,” Karen says.

“Turn it all off,” Peter says with a pang in his chest. “Location services, everything.”

“Got it. There are no suitable locations in this area, Peter. I would suggest backtracking up Third Avenue and eventually making your way to Long Island City or Maspeth, as there are a good amount uninhabited buildings in those areas.”

Queens. Of course. Hiding in his own backyard. Isn’t that what they did in the movies to throw off the bad guys?

One problem though…

“How the heck am I supposed to get across the bridges with no one seeing me?”

Another pause. “I can help you onto the 34th Street ferry unseen, which will dock right in Long Island City.”

The logistics of that almost shorts out his brain, but he trusts Karen to come through. “Thanks, Karen,” he breaths out. Okay. A plan. A temporary plan, but at least it was something.

Another thought comes to him. “Karen, do you have a location on where I stashed my bag before… before?” Usually he’d keep better track, but he was so excited to meet up with MJ that he kinda just webbed it up and ran.

“I believe you stored it on the roof of the building facing west on 3rd and 54th.”

Okay. New quest objectives. Find bag. Change back into civvies. Somehow make it onto the ferry unseen. Somehow then make it across the East River to Queens unseen. Find somewhere to hunker down for the foreseeable future. Until all this blew over? Was that even possible?

Main objective: try not to think about how his life was now completely ruined, and how he was on the run for multiple alleged serious charges that would land him in prison, or worse, for a long, long time.

“Karen,” he says, as he swings as discretely as possible uptown. “Don’t make any contact, but is there any way you can let me know if MJ and May and Ned are safe? Oh man, I hope Happy got to them before anyone else did…”

“Mr. Hogan has been in contact with May and is currently en route to her address. Based on text messaging, Ned and MJ are also in contact with May. Location parameters suggest they are also converging on May’s location.”

Peter feels a tiny bit of weight lift from his chest. “Okay. Okay, good. That’s good. Let me know if anything changes.”

Finally he makes it to midtown Manhattan; sure enough, his bag still sticks to the cinderblock wall at the top of the towering building he left it on. He grabs it and opens it up to double check the contents. Hoodie, jeans, socks, shoes, wallet, two granola bars, a rubber band, and his phone and phone charger.

“Karen, can you connect with my phone without turning on location services so I can talk to you without the mask?”

“Of course. Mr. Stark had that set up for you from the get-go.” Ice washes over Peter at the name, and he shakes his head to clear it. _Focus on the now_.

“Okay, good,” he mutters, throwing on the backpack. He hasn’t heard the helicopter for a while, but every second he’s out and about increases his risk of being spotted, especially in such a brightly colored, easily recognizable outfit. He doesn’t want to change just yet though, as his suit’s HUD and Karen in his ear would help more than being on the streets in regular clothes.

He’s desperate to hide away in silence and mentally untangle and process everything that’s happened over the past hour – _hour? only an hour?_ – but he has to keep moving, the tingle in his spine only growing the more he stays in one place out in the open.

Peter blows out a breath and sets his sights towards the east, to the 34th Street ferry.

He hops from building to building, crouching low, making his way further downtown and then cutting over on 44th Street to 2nd Avenue, then to 1st Avenue. It’s a gorgeous day, the sky clear, the water between Manhattan and Queens glimmering in the sun. With Karen’s help, he finds an inconspicuous building with a covered overhang on the roof, and he quickly slips on his regular clothes, stuffing his suit in his bag. From there, it’s a very slow, very cautious trip down the side of the building, avoiding the eyes of New Yorkers, as well as security cameras.

He pulls up his hood as soon as he’s on the ground and keeps his eyes trained downward. Tamping down on the surge of anxiety now that he’s on the ground, he lifts his phone to his ear.

“Karen?”

“Hi, Peter.”

“Hey, great, okay. So, how are we gonna do this?”

“Head to the landing from the north. There will be a service ramp a few feet below the passenger ramp, near the stern. You should be able to wait there undetected for the next six minutes and 28 seconds until the ferry arrives. I would advise waiting until all incoming and outgoing passengers have embarked and disembarked before climbing onto the ferry.”

He does as she says. It’s colder here by the water as he waits; he tugs the hoodie around him closer. Finally the ferry comes. It’s middle of the day, so there’s far fewer people than would be at rush hour. Small mercies.

He waits until just before the ferry pushes away from the dock and then scrambles up the stern, maneuvering so he (hopefully) won’t be spotted by anyone on shore or in the ship. Luck seems to be in his favor for this very, very small fraction of his day, as he pokes his head over the railing and doesn’t see anyone looking his way.

Once he’s seated on a bench on the outside deck, he brings his phone back to his ear.

“You’re awesome,” he says quietly, anxiety dissipating for the moment. “Thanks, Karen.”

Ten minutes to go until he reaches the other side.

*

He’s one of the last to disembark when the ferry reaches the Long Island City terminal, senses once again spiking, self-preservation forcing him to hear _everything_ to make sure he hasn’t been spotted, hasn’t been recognized. Peter grits his teeth and wills his heart to slow, but no dice.

In typical New York fashion, though, no one spares him a passing glance, everyone just trying to get from their point A to point B without being hassled. He slips away toward the less inhabited, more industrial areas.

“All right, Karen, what do you got for me?”

“It’s still difficult to pinpoint a location that is completely uninhabited for more than a few blocks. However, there is a boarded up warehouse on Hunters Point Avenue that should be suitable for now.”

He knows when he spots it: all old, crumbling brick and graffiti and weathered plywood on the windows. He scans the area to make sure he’s in the clear to climb the four-story building and then makes his way up. The locked door for roof access is easy to pull open, even with his dwindling energy reserves.

The inside is dank and dirty, evidence of previous squatters having come and gone, but it’s quiet, and that’s all he cares about right now.

He shucks off his backpack and sinks to the floor, exhausted. Against better judgment, he glances at his phone: 64% battery. Over 150 missed phone calls and voicemails, and double that many text messages. It’s barely been two hours since everything went to hell.

Peter turns off his phone and sobs for a long time.

*

He comes to at some point, head muzzy and eyes swollen. What little light makes its way in through the boarded up windows is golden orange: sunset.

_Wonder what May is doing right this second_ , he thinks miserably, trying to stave off the crushing loneliness. If May, Ned, and MJ were together, they were probably trying to figure out next steps and how to clear his name. Maybe working with Happy or even Ms. Potts. His gut sours at the thought of everyone trying to fix the mess he got himself into while he cowered away in an abandoned warehouse in Queens, but the thought of putting any of them in danger outweighs his guilt.

His stomach gurgles, and he sighs. He needs to figure out a plan. Another set of quest objectives. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Shelter? Check, for now. Food? Two granola bars… not great. Half check that one. Water? Negative. Warmth? Also potentially a problem.

He thinks. Midtown had done a couple of volunteer service opportunities at soup kitchens in the area. A potential option if he’s careful. Dumpster diving and stealing are the only other two options he can think of, and neither seem obviously appealing. The nights were still chilly, but fortunately not below freezing, so for now he would just have to make do with what he had.

The next few days are an exercise in managing patience and boredom to the max. The temptation to turn on his phone, even just to play a game or take a quick scroll through Instagram was the worst of it, but battery conservation in case he needed Karen was pretty far up there in terms of importance.

He only lasts 18 hours before he’s desperate for food and water. Having an enhanced metabolism is awesome, until it’s not. The thought of venturing out into the world sets his heart racing, so he tries scrounging through a few nearby residential trash receptacles and succeeds in finding a three-quarter full Gatorade bottle ( _the purple kind, ugh, the worst_ ) and a bag of half moldy bread. But if anything, that makes him hungrier.

“C’mon, you’re an Avenger,” he mumbles to himself. “Former Avenger? Whatever. Just… go. It would be pretty improbable to be caught right away, right? Sure. Yeah.”

He sets off to the church where the closest soup kitchen is.

St. Lawrence’s Table operates out of an old stone church in Sunnyside; there’s already a line forming at the door. He files in, hoodie up and shoulders hunched.

Finally he’s seated at a corner with a tray of food: salad, a large bowl of ziti, a chunk of soft bread, and a container of chocolate pudding. Despite being ravenous, he tries to eat it all as slowly as possible.

All seems to be going smoothly until he hears his name behind him.

“You hear the latest on that Parker kid? Jesus, barely 17-years-old.”

A sigh. “Benny, aren’t you sick of talking about that shit yet? It’s fucked up. It’s all they’re blabbering about on the news; I’m tired of hearing about it.”

“Nah, man,” Benny said. “All these superheroes, or whatever. I hope they rot. I hope they get what’s comin’ to them. They fucked up this city, and now where are they? Hope that kid gets what’s comin’ to him; don’t care that he’s underage or whatever.”

“I dunno,” the other voice says, begrudgingly adding to the conversation. “That lady on that one station was saying that this Beck guy was a few fries short of a Happy Meal, y’know? Had a history of instability.”

Benny scoffs. “So? What does that have to do with Spider-Man straight up murdering him and a bunch of other people?”

“Dude. Spider-Man saved your dumb ass once upon a time. Pro’ly saved half of Queens from other dumb shit at some point or another. You really think he’s the type?”

“Whatever,” Benny says. “I don’t know. People change. Don’t know if you remember, but shit got real bad here for a bit.”

Peter can’t listen to any more, frozen muscles suddenly flowing with liquid fire to _get away_. He dumps his trash and stows his tray, forcing himself not to run from the church.

That night is cold, almost bitterly so. He puts on the suit underneath his clothes and uses the built-in heater every so often, albeit sparingly; it’s not like it needs to be charged or anything, but repairs on certain electrical functions need to be done often enough that he doesn’t want to burn through all of it at once.

He sleeps fitfully.

It’s the dead of night when he’s suddenly awoken, a resonating _clang_ echoing in his ears. He’s up and crouched in an instant, all senses on high alert, stock still, straining as hard as he can to pinpoint where it had come from.

And then he sees—

He sees—

The cape shifts as if there’s a breeze in the sealed up warehouse. No helmet. Beck stands, staring at Peter, unmoving, at the far opposite end of the open floor.

“No,” Peter whispers.

Beck grins.

Peter feels a static in his head, building in intensity, a pounding headache right between his eyes. He gasps, squints, and when his vision shifts, Beck is gone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things go from bad, to worse. :(

He stays scrunched in the corner of the rotten ceiling for the rest of the night, wide awake and alert. Common sense tells him seeing Beck was the result of sleep-deprived PTSD hallucinations, but the barest sliver of doubt wins out.

As morning light filters in through the plywood cracks, he drops to the ground, rubbing his eyes.

“Ugh,” he mumbles. “I’d give anything to brush my teeth.”

Despite having the one meal the day before, hunger pains make themselves known. He feels, well, weak; knows his calorie intake should be way, way more, and on top of that, he’s probably only slept a grand total of 10 hours during the past few nights. It’s not a good combo, especially with not knowing much in the way of specifics about his physiology.

Thanks to daylight, the warehouse now seems a lot less creepy, so he resolves to try to sleep just for a little bit. As he settles onto his lumpy backpack, he thinks of his friends, wondering what they’re doing. He’d been so, so tempted to just send a quick text to Ned to let him know he was okay, or just an “I’m sorry” to MJ. God, MJ. He can’t stop thinking about her face in the crowd, how afraid she’d looked and how it startled him to see her in such an unfamiliar way. Despite it all, he smiles a little. Unflappable MJ, his girlfriend. Hopefully still his girlfriend. Having a boyfriend on the run was probably way cooler than a regular boyfriend.

He grabs a couple of hours of restless sleep, and around noon he makes his way back to the church, hood up yet again. Lunch is a pretty flavorless chicken and rice casserole, but it fills his stomach for the time being.

He’s on his way back to the warehouse, trying to simultaneously enjoy the sunshine while not lingering too long out in the open, when he hears raised voices the next block over; someone definitely being threatened.

He’s completely torn, brain moving a mile a minute to try to decide what to do. In the end, it isn’t even a question.

He scales the nearest building to scope out the situation and sees an open warehouse bay door. Just inside, a big white dude threatening an older-looking man with a pistol.

“--supposed to be there at 3am, sharp. But I get a call from my guys this morning, saying it never showed. Now I gotta be here, checking in on your dumb ass, and I’m trying to figure out why that is.”

“It _was_ there,” the other guy growls out. “Your idiots never showed. We waited a whole two hours for them, and then we packed up shop. But now I come back this morning, and the product is missing, Joe. So _you_ tell _me_ what the fuck that’s all about.”

“Are you implying I double-crossed you?” Joe says with a threatening smile, stepping closer to the other guy and brandishing the pistol higher. “C’mon, Mr. Magoo. How long we been in this game together? Huh? You really wanna ruin a good thing?”

The older guy doesn’t rise to the bait. “I want my product back, or I want double the payment for the shit you’re putting me through. In cash.”

Peter’s spine tingles, and he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that this Joe guy is about to blow his top. Like if he looked close enough, he could probably see steam shooting out the guy’s ears. After a moment’s hesitation, he scrunches up his hood a bit tighter so that his features are in shadow.

“Hey guys!” he shouts, jumping from the roof and landing on a nearby dumpster with a thud. “Wow, sounds like you’re in a real pickle, both of you. Have you tried marriage counseling?”

“Who the fuck—” he hears one of them say, and then sees two weapons trained on him.

“Get out of here, kid,” the older guy says.

“Naw, sounds like a real party I don’t wanna miss. But these things—” Peter fires his web shooters (and what precious remaining web fluid he has left) at the guns and then rips them back toward him, “—are too dangerous to play with.”

“Hooooly shit. Holy shit. You’re that kid. That Parker kid,” Joe says, and Peter can admit to himself that he probably shouldn’t have played his hand so early, but oh well. He’ll knock them both out and tie them up and be out of here before anyone else knows.

Both of them scramble backwards as Peter closes in. “Can you guys find it within yourselves to maybe be cool and chill for like, ten minutes?”

The older guy reaches to a nearby bag, grabbing a Glock, and fires at Peter. The echo in the warehouse rattles his bones, but he deftly flips out of the way.

“You’re worth just about as much dead as you are alive to some people,” he tells Peter, firing off another shot. “One way or another today, I’m going to collect.”

“Whoa, nice—hey, where do you think my net worth stacks up against other Avengers now?” Another shot at him as he ducks behind a large piece of machinery. “I’m probably a leg up on Thor now, right?”

He uses the shadows to bounce from spot to spot, closer to them, flanking them from the right. Hopefully he can do the rest of this without using his web shooters. Crouching, he silently moves closer.

They both cry out when he sweeps their legs out from underneath them, the Glock firing off again. The gun falls to the floor, and Peter kicks it away as best he can.

“You little shit—” Joe grunts, wildly punching. Peter manages to duck them all except an uppercut that has him blinking and stunned for only a second.

But it’s a second both guys need to maneuver themselves into a steadier position. “I’m gonna kill you, and then I’m gonna track down all your friends and family slaughter them in their sleep,” Joe spits out, throwing another punch; this one, Peter easily ducks. “Everyone knows everything about you now, Spider-Kid.”

The past few days catch up to Peter within the span of a heartbeat; he feels sick, limbs like lead. Exhausted.

It’s probably why he misses the tactical knife coming straight at him, sinking in to his side.

He cries out, stumbling backwards, his hands immediately clutching at his side to staunch the blood flow. The older guy comes in again for a second attack, knife held high, but Peter kicks him square in the stomach, sending him flying backwards. Peter groans in pain at the movement.

He barely gets a moment’s respite when Joe comes at him, meaty fists swinging, but Peter’s had enough. He punches back probably harder than he should and is rewarded with blood splatter from Joe’s broken nose. Joe screams in pain and falls back on his rear, and Peter uses the opportunity to throw a right hook.

The man slumps on the concrete floor, unconscious.

Peter’s ears are ringing, but he forces himself up quickly to find the older guy and take him down too. Only problem is, he can’t find him anywhere among the mess of the warehouse floor.

“Shit,” he says under his breath. “Dammit, dammit… _ah_ …” His side feels like it’s being basted in molten lava, throbbing in time to his erratic heartbeat. He messed this up. He really, really messed this up.

Moving on autopilot, he finds some nearby electrical cords and ties up big Joe’s hands and feet and then secures him tightly to a metal beam. He then scrounges around and finds a phone on a nearby bench and calls 911 with an anonymous tip, and then hightails it out of there.

His own warehouse is fortunately not much further away, but he takes the long route just in case the other guy was on his trail.

He’s trembling with a cold sweat by the time he makes it back, and the whole left side of his body is positively on fire. Blood soaks through the dark fabric of his hoodie. He lifts it slowly, gasping when the cloth rips from the tacky surface of his skin.

The wound is about three inches long and probably another two inches deep, positioned just under his ribs, aiming downward toward his hip. He’s pretty sure the knife only hit muscle… like, 70% sure. A&P science was never really his forte.

The blood flow had stemmed to a trickle, so that was good. Sacrificing one of the bottles of water he had picked up from the soup kitchen, he cleans the wound as best he can, even separating the flaps of skin to get deep in the wound, gritting his teeth and breathing deeply as best he can all the while.

He has no fishing line, no needle, no thread, no tape, no nothing, but he does have an extra overshirt he found in the trash while wandering one afternoon. He rips off a small portion and presses it on the gash to hopefully completely staunch the blood flow. He _does_ remember reading some kind of survival guide once, saying that if sutures or antibiotic ointment isn’t available, to instead dress the wound with a moist bandage underneath a dry bandage, so he does just that. He super does not think about how dubiously clean the overshirt is as he rips off more strips, pouring the little remaining water on one, placing it on the wound, and then tying the longer, dry strips around him like a belt.

His teeth are chattering from shock by the time he’s done, so he slips to the ground as gingerly he can and closes his eyes.

Disaster. Absolute disaster. As someone pretty familiar with staking out criminal activity, he’d say they were pretty high up on the Bad Guy scale. Some kind of organized crime. A fence and a buyer. One of them still out for his blood.

He needed to move. Like, physically _get up_ and move and find somewhere else to hunker down, ‘cause if the risk of being found before had him paranoid, staying here would be exponentially worse.

He musters up all the strength and courage he can, pulls out his phone, and turns it on.

“Karen,” he rasps out. “I messed up.”

*  
  
Karen tries to make him feel a little less bad, which is nice, but she’s an AI, so it doesn’t really land the same way. If Mr. Stark were here—

Nope nope nope. Those thoughts were compartmentalized and stowed away deep for a reason, at least for now. Quest objectives. Hierarchy of Needs. Do now, angst later.

Karen leads him to a sprawling storage facility in the middle of Maspeth, a residential and transportation dead zone. He slips in through a broken window on the upper floor, completely drenched in sweat despite the cooler weather.

“Geez, I could get tetanus just walking around here,” he says, carefully maneuvering around piles of junk and collapsed portions of the ceiling.

“Sorry, Peter,” Karen responds. “Unfortunately this location is the best suitable option for the time being, especially with your labored breathing. How is your pain, on a scale of one to ten?”

Peter rolls his eyes. “Cube root of 343. I’m fine, Karen, but thanks.”

“Seven isn’t historically known as ‘fine.’ I can call someone for you. May has tried to reach out 178 ti—”

“ _No_ ,” he says forcefully. He feels nauseous. “No. Thanks Karen, but… it’s okay. We’ll figure this out.”

He finds a somewhat clear corner and drops his bag. Exhaustion crashes into him like a wave, and he can hear his racing heartbeat in his ears. At some point he drifts off, occasionally startled awake by his own chattering teeth and shivers. His left side feels aflame, every movement like a hot poker probing under his skin, down to the bone.

It must be middle of the night when suddenly, from one moment to the next, he’s wide awake, senses blaring like a klaxon. He doesn’t dare move, hardly breathing, straining to hear—

“—sweep this one; pretty sure down this way.”

“You said that two hours ago.”

“Well, now I’m saying it again. He’s gotta be close.”

_Oh no. Oh no. Oh shit._ The guy from the warehouse must have tracked him down and found him, and now he and his squad were here. _Must’ve gotten sloppy somewhere_ , Peter thinks, mind racing as his eyes dart to potential escape routes. Maybe he wasn’t covering his tracks as well as he thought he was.

Other than their initial conversation, the intruders are scarily quiet, as if well trained to track and infiltrate. Just awesome. Luckily for Peter, his enhanced senses were tuned for just that sort of thing. He stands and starts moving toward the broken window where he slipped in initially, but a sudden bout of vertigo has him overcorrecting, and he stumbles into a toolbox.

Dead silence.

And then—swifter than he would have thought possible, Peter hears them moving up to his level, right towards him.

Stealth be damned; he rushes to the window, heart pounding.

“Kid, wait!” he hears from behind, then: “He’s out, north side of the building.”

“Already on it,” says a muffled confirmation.

He jumps to the ground and groans, the pain in his side shorting out everything for a moment. But then he’s off running, setting his sights on a nearby alley that would hopefully lead to a maze of escape opportunities. He scales a fire escape, and just as he reaches the top, his senses go haywire.

Quentin Beck is waiting for him. Grinning.

“Hey, Pete.”

_No, no, no, no, no, not now, please, not now._

Peter stumbles backward and finds himself encased in walls of flame, though he feels no heat.

Beck steps through the flame like parting a curtain.

“You can’t kill me,” he says, slowly coming closer. “I’ll always be right. In. Here.” Beck emphasizes each word, pointing at his temple.

The wall of flames turns into a swirling, fiery tornado, and he feels something grasping his arm and pulling. He jerks and shudders, senses telling him to _get away now NOW NOW._

He can barely see what’s in front of him, but he jumps with as much force as he can muster and lands with a pained gasp on the brick façade of a mid-rise. Instinct guides him, jumping and ducking and twisting to get away as far and as fast as he possibly can. He can hear muffled shouts behind him, but he pays them no attention.

He has no idea where he is when the haze of panic finally lifts, but the twilight pre-dawn blue colors the sky to the east.

He’s done. He’s just… done.

Barely able to move another inch, he nearly collapses where he stands and curls into a tight corner in between an electrical box and a concrete wall, surrendering consciousness almost immediately.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lil' bit of explicit medical/wound stuff in this one, just a head's up.

Peter refuses to move for the entire day, though whether out of his own volition or not, he’s not sure. Consciousness comes and goes. One moment, the shadows on the building lean jaggedly to the left, and the next, the sun beats on the back of his neck, directly overhead.

Beck, fortunately, does not make another appearance.

By nightfall, he’s slightly more lucid, so he uses the opportunity to change out the poor excuse of a bandage. He only has one more bottle of water left; he drinks a quarter of it, barely doing anything for his dry, cracked lips, and then wets another strip of overshirt, ripped from the meager fabric that’s left.

His stomach roils when he sees the wound. It’s a deep, angry red, the skin around it swollen and super sensitive to the touch. He packs it as best he can, gritting his teeth as he tries to tie the bandage to stay in place without squeezing too tight.

Good to know that food and sleep are pretty instrumental when it comes to his enhanced healing. If things were normal, he’d bet it would already be scabbed up by now.

Karen tells him he’s now in Bushwick, which, geez. He’s not sure how he was able to go that far on what limited energy reserves he has. Speaking of, his phone battery is at 19% and falling, so he quickly thanks her and turns it back off.

The other unnerving thing that he’s been trying to ignore since he woke up was the feeling of being watched. He really, _really_ hopes it’s just paranoia, but the Tingle, as May would say (God he misses May, don’t think about her, don’t think about her), hasn’t been wrong yet.

He gives in and digs in to his granola bar “stash,” eating half of one bar and wrapping the rest back up with the rubber band. It’s dry in his mouth and doesn’t do anything for the constant low-grade nausea he’s been feeling for some time, but at least it’s something.

Leaning back into his little cubby area, he closes his eyes, exhausted from just those few tasks. His senses spike every now and again, telling him he should get a move on to a different location, can’t stay in one place for too long, _they’ll find you_ , but he’s just… so tired.

He wakes up some indeterminable time later to the moon high in the night sky and a shadowed figure standing above him.

“We’re here to help,” it says, palms faced outward as if placating a startled animal.

_Help? Oh no no no no no._ Peter knew what kind of “help” was likely being offered, and he was not interested.

He nearly screams as he launches himself from a crouched position backwards onto the building next door. The stab wound is completely aflame, and every movement his torso makes is agony; he’s pretty sure the skin ripped open again, blood leaking out, as the scent of copper is all he can smell.

The shadowed figure jumps deftly across the fifteen-foot gap between buildings like it’s nothing. Like they’re….

Peter blinks, sweat stinging his eyes.

And then he’s scrambling across the rooftop, feeling out of his mind with panic. He hears a groan behind him, and then: “Sam.”

“Yep,” whoever Sam is says. Peter hears the soft whirring of an engine, and then another figure lands in front of him.

“Jesus, kid,” he says. “Give it a rest already.”

But Peter is already halfway down the building. He cuts over in an alley, jumping a chain-link fence, and barrels down a side street, dodging parked cars and trash cans. He crawls up the side of a three-story house and lands in a backyard of detritus and crumbling black asphalt.

Another fence. Another house—up, then down the other side. He feels like he may throw up.

He staggers down another alley, intent on making it to the high-rise apartment buildings he can see looming in the near distance, but his way is blocked by the shadowed figure.

_Back back back back_ , his brain says, and so he stumbles back the way he came.

He stops short when he sees that his way out is also blocked by the other person.

They have him trapped.

“Peter,” the first figure says, softly, calmly. “It’s okay. We’re here to help.”

He scrabbles for the brick structure to his left, but he can’t get purchase, he can’t—

“Hey kiddo,” the other figure says, stepping and crouching low. “We’re not holding grudges from how you thoroughly whooped us in Germany, okay? Promise.”

Germany?

Peter scrapes his wrist over his eyes, breathing hard.

Oh.

_Oh_.

Like someone’s cut the strings just barely holding him up, he falls to the ground. They’re both on him immediately.

“Hey Mr. Barnes. Mr. Wilson,” he says weakly. “Long time no see. That’s, uh. That’s pretty generous of you to say.”

“It is pretty generous, isn’t it,” Sam Wilson mutters. He immediately zeros in on stab wound, gingerly trying to peek underneath the makeshift bandage. “Damn, kid. Had a bit of a rough go of it, huh.”

“You could say that,” Peter slurs, feeling his eyes close. “Also, not a kid.”

One of them snorts. “Let’s keep you alive long enough to graduate high school, and then we’ll talk,” says Mr. Wilson.

His heart clenches, and he feels like he might be sick again. “Can’t graduate high school. Can’t go out. Can’t do anything now.” Some distant part of him realizes he’s saying too much, especially to _them_ ; he barely knows them outside of the little sparring match at the airport, but he’s pretty sure they have way more important things to do than hear him whine about this whole stupid mess.

At some point during his introspective reflection, they’ve lifted him up, as the next thing he knows, he’s got one arm around each of their shoulders with him in the middle. He tries as best he can to coordinate his feet to walk in step with theirs.

“Where’re we going?” he asks, straining to keep his eyes open. His head feels like a balloon tethered five feet above them.

Mr. Barnes sighs. “Brooklyn.”

“Oh.” A pause. “Thought we were already in Brooklyn.”

“Brooklyn proper,” is all Mr. Barnes says.

“’Kay.”

It feels like they walk for forever. He must black out here and there, because he’ll lift his head every now and again and see a completely different street from where they previously were. He’s too tired to care.

Finally, they reach a small, nondescript apartment building just off a busy street. It looks just about as good a shape as the abandoned warehouses he was squatting in.

He sees why when Mr. Wilson eventually gets the door open.

It’s a shithole. Like maybe even more so than where he’d been hiding. Debris scattered everywhere, ceiling tiles snapped in half on the floor, exposing wiring and vents in the ceiling. Walls graffitied and smeared with… he doesn’t even want to know.

He must make some kind of noise because Mr. Barnes says, “It’s homier than it seems.”

“It is _not_ ,” Mr. Wilson says. “Fortunately, it’s also temporary. But that’s a story for another time.”

Peter’s head is pounding, but the ambient noises around them are blessedly minor; he’s not even sure there’s anyone else living in this apartment building. They trudge up the stairs to the third floor, trying not to jostle Peter as best they can, but by the end of it, he’s barely conscious again.

“Kid? Hey, c’mon, we need you awake, at least for a little bit longer.”

The next thing he knows, he’s lying on an avocado-green couch that’s probably twice as old as he is.

“I’m not a field medic,” he hears Mr. Wilson mutter. He’s got Peter’s left side exposed, and his eyes are wide with alarm.

“I’ve got it. I’ve done enough patch up work on—oh.” Mr. Barnes comes back into the room with a first aid kit and a few other odds and ends, but he stops short, staring at Peter’s torso.

“Wha—” is all Peter can manage. He manages a peak down to his side and nearly loses what little he has in his stomach.

The wound is—disgusting, to put it lightly. It’s swollen, the sides of his open skin nearly curling outwards, and small rivulets of blood and pus are leaking from within. Faint red lines extend less than an inch out from the wound itself.

“Okay,” Mr. Barnes says calmly. “Sam, go get some towels and the heavier quilt. I’m gonna go warm up some water and add salt to make a saline solution to clean that out. Drink this,” he hands Peter a bottle of water, “very slowly. No painkillers or anything else in your stomach until we take care of this. Sorry.”

“’S fine. Regular painkillers don’t work on me anyway,” Peter mumbles. He tries to take a small sip of water—as Mr. Barnes advised—very slowly. He’s rewarded with a rising sensation of nausea in his throat. He closes his eyes and breathes slowly.

When he opens his eyes again, they’re both back, methodically setting up a makeshift ER.

Mr. Barnes sets down a beat-up metal bowl next to him and dips a towel in it. “This is probably going to hurt.”

“Your bedside manner is incredible,” Mr. Wilson says. Mr. Barnes ignores him.

He starts by trickling in some of the saline solution into the wound, which is unpleasant at most. But when he presses the towel down onto sensitive skin, Peter can’t help the deep groan of pain. He tries as best he can to stay still, but the urge to flinch back is nearly overwhelming.

Mr. Barnes alternates back and forth between trickling the saline solution and pressing the towel onto the wound for at least twenty minutes, cleaning out the infection as gently has he can. Sweat beads on Peter’s brow, but he can’t stop shivering. Someone – Mr. Wilson? – had wrapped a quilt around his shoulders. He pushes his cheek into it, inhaling the somewhat musty, homey scent of fabric softener.

“—ter,” he hears. And then a pause. “Peter?”

“Hnn,” he says.

“We’re almost done for now,” Mr. Barnes says. “I’m going to suture this closed and then put a couple of bandages on it. Can you stay awake a little longer?”

Peter wobbles his head, trying as best he can to ignore his gradually increasing tunnel vision.

“Okay,” Mr. Barnes says. “Needle incoming.”

The sharp prick in tender, inflamed skin was just another kind of pain to add to the cresting tidal wave of agony, and he could do nothing but let it wash over him. Almost worse was thinking about the act itself of sewing his torn skin together. He never used to be so squeamish. He and Ned had spent last summer daring each other to watch exponentially more graphic surgery videos. Ned had lost after nearly passing out from one that had to do with an eyeball and a fishing hook.

That kind of stuff probably hits different when you’ve been on the run and in fear for your life because everyone thinks you’re a mass murderer and as a result have barely slept and eaten anything on top of already having a high maintenance metabolism. Probably.

He opens bleary eyes to see four pills in a metal hand in front of him.

“Are you gonna lose your lunch?”

“D’dn’t have lunch,” he forces out, every word a marathon race. “Those don’t work ‘n me.”

“Humor me,” Mr. Barnes says. “Two are antibiotics anyway.”

It takes him nearly ten minutes to swallow them all, breathing deeply through his nose in between drinks of water. He can’t think of anything more embarrassing than throwing up in front of the Winter Soldier.

Finally he sets down the glass and lies back on the cushion. Mr. Wilson leans in the doorway, arms crossed.

“We got a lot to discuss,” he says, frowning slightly. “Get some rest, kid.”

Peter’s asleep before he turns off the lights.

*

Someone’s touching him—his left side. His side _hurts._ Why does it hurt? He can’t remember _anything_. Not what day it is, not where he is or what he was doing to make the pain so bad. And there’s something damp on the source of the pain. It’s wildly uncomfortable, and he hates it. He groans and tries to push the person, the dampness, everything, away.

A hand grabs him—gently?

“Hang in there,” the someone says. “Almost done.”

Almost done what?

In the end, it’s too much effort to care. His senses are quiet and under control, so maybe… maybe it’s okay.

He lets go.

*

It’s dark when he opens his eyes.

He doesn’t move for a long while, his brain just trying to play catch up.

The couch under him is surprisingly comfortable. The room he’s in is… another story. It’s Spartan—couch (currently occupied), folding table in the corner, a couple milk crates stacked around it, and two larger gym bags on the floor.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. They had found him. Took him back to their… apartment? Patched him up.

Patched him up because he had gotten stabbed. Because… because….

The weight of his identity revealed to the whole world crashes on him like a bag of bricks.

He rubs a hand over his eyes. There’s nothing he can do about that right now. Maybe if he explains the situation to Mr. Barnes and Mr. Wilson… maybe they could help?

He hears the clink of a dish in another room—presumably the kitchen—and in that same moment, his stomach growls so hard he’s sure it could be heard three apartments over.

Time to test if walking is a thing that’s doable right now.

Fortunately, it is, though the pull of the stitches underneath the bandages on his left side is still incredibly unpleasant.

He hobbles gingerly to the room he guesses is the kitchen and comes nearly face to face with Mr. Barnes.

“Kitchen” is generous—it’s the world’s tiniest cooking nook, though there’s enough space for a small oven and stovetop, on which a pot of water boils, a bag of instant rice next to it.

“Uh—” Peter says, completely unprepared for a one-on-one conversation. Fortunately Mr. Barnes doesn’t seem to notice.

“Welcome back,” he says and drops the bag of rice in the water. “How are you feeling?”

“Um. Okay. I think. Better than before.”

Mr. Barnes nods, grabbing a loaf of white bread.

“Thank you, uh, for finding me and helping me out,” Peter says. “You didn’t have to, so… thanks.”

“’Course we did, kid.” Peter watches as he holds a slice of bread over the gas flame on the stovetop. “How do you like your toast?”

“My—my toast?”

“That wasn’t your stomach growling for the past two hours?” Mr. Barnes gives him a wry look. “I’m sure you’re starving.”

Peter feels himself turn a bit pink. “Yes, I mean—I could eat. But you guys have done so much already, I don’t want to inconvenience….”

“Not an inconvenience,” he hears from behind him. Peter doesn’t jump, but it’s a near thing, and he frowns at his own lack of awareness.

“Besides,” Mr. Wilson continues. “Bucky’s usually up for a midnight snack around this time anyways.”

“It’s the best time to have a grilled cheese,” Mr. Barnes deadpans, and Peter has absolutely no idea if he’s joking or not.

“You must be feeling better if you’re up and about,” Mr. Wilson says.

“I think so, yeah—thank you,” Peter replies. “How long have I been…?”

“Just about 48 hours now.” Peter’s mouth drops open in shock.

“Two whole days…” he says faintly. Well… it wasn’t like he didn’t need the rest. Though his wound still felt pretty raw, like he still wasn’t healing as fast as he normally would. Probably because—

“Eat,” Mr. Barnes says, and a plate of plain white rice and buttered toast appears under his nose. “Nothing heavy for at least another day or so, but this’ll help kick start things.”

“You can follow me to our grand dining room, if you feel up to sitting,” Mr. Wilson says with a nod of his head to the folding table and milk crates.

It takes everything in him not to shovel the food into his face at an embarrassing speed. It’s all pretty bland, of course, but he finds it satisfying all the same.

“So,” Mr. Wilson says eventually, staring Peter down hard, but not unkindly. “You’ve had a pretty eventful few weeks. Wanna talk about it?”

Peter closes his eyes, takes a breath, and starts from the beginning.


	4. Chapter 4

He learns it’s been twelve days since the whole world found out who Spider-Man was. He’s a bit disappointed in himself, that he couldn’t even last two weeks on his own, but he’s still grateful that Mr. Barnes and Mr. Wilson found him before anyone else did.

He talks until his throat is dry, even going as far back as telling them how he’d gotten bit by the spider, glossing over the finer details of Ben, and how Mr. Stark had recruited him. It feels… good. As great a friend Ned is, and as much as he loves his aunt, he’s never really had other people like him to talk to, especially someone like Mr. Barnes, as an enhanced individual. They don’t look at him with pity in their eyes or ask “why”; they know why. They understand why he does what he does and all the facets that come with those decisions.

“I hate to ask,” Mr. Barnes says finally after a few moments of silence, when Peter has finally wound down. “But do you know for sure that Beck was definitely dead?”

Peter starts, his heart thumping loudly in his chest. He’d neglected to tell them about the recent… issues his dumb brain was working through in conjuring Beck at inopportune moments, just for now. But… he _had_ to be dead. There was no way he could have survived that. Right? “I, uh,” he says, mind working around the tiniest kernel of doubt. “I mean… I didn’t physically check. But the drones he used, they… they’re pretty thorough.”

“So Beck obviously recorded that video before you made it on to the bridge,” Mr. Wilson muses. “Maybe as a failsafe, in the event that he did die. Was it automatically sent to the Daily Bugle? Or did someone find that video footage later and send it?”

“Probably the latter. I can’t see the Daily Bugle holding on to anything for more than five seconds that would generate so much traffic for them, regardless of fact checking,” Peter says dismally.

“Did Beck have known associates? A team?” Mr. Barnes asks.

Peter shrugs. “I don’t know. He never said anything about that. But the amount of effort and coordination it would take to program those drones and how big those illusions were… there’s no way he would have been able to do that on his own.”

“So we can assume there’s someone, or multiple someones, still out there, potentially carrying out Beck’s plan.” Mr. Wilson runs a hand over his forehead, thinking. “Question is, why bother with the final act? What would they have to gain from outing your identity?”

“Besides being sore losers with a flair for the dramatic? Maybe somehow gaining access to EDITH again? It is a pretty powerful piece of tech.”

“Most of Stark’s stuff is, though,” Mr. Barnes says. He stares at Peter for a long moment in scrutiny, which makes Peter want to duck his head. He focuses on Mr. Barnes’s metal arm instead.

“You said EDITH is with Happy Hogan?” Mr. Wilson asks.

“Right,” Peter says, shoulders slumping, curling in on himself now for real. “I just… didn’t think I was 100% ready for that responsibility. Yet. Obviously.”

“Pepper Potts is top shareholder of Stark Industries now, right?” Mr. Barnes asks suddenly.

Peter gapes, just a little, unsure why that would be relevant. “I guess? That’s what was reported. Mr. Stark’s will wasn’t—he didn’t—it’s not been released to the public.”

“And she hasn’t reached out to you about anything recently? Before all this, I mean.”

“No?” Simple questions with simple answers, but Peter feels his anxiety spike.

“Hm,” Mr. Barnes grunts, but doesn’t offer anything more.

Peter feels frazzled and is a bit tired of talking about himself, so he turns the questions on them. “So… what are you guys doing in New York? And how did you find me?”

“Not gonna lie, kid, you cover your tracks pretty well,” Mr. Wilson says, realizing the subject change for what it was.

Peter couldn’t help but puff up in pride a bit at his words—especially from former on-the-run, Avengers-level soldiers.

“I said ‘pretty well,’ not great,” Mr. Wilson continues with a withering glance. “You’re also able to—annoyingly—get into a lot of places quicker than we probably could.”

“Yeah, _that’s_ why it took you nearly two weeks to catch up with me,” Peter says.

“Took us that long to recover from the shock of finding out you’re not even old enough to vote,” Mr. Barnes says, not a hint of sarcasm.

“I get not being able to get out of the city,” Mr. Wilson says, “but aren’t you from Queens? Pretty risky to hide in plain sight.”

Peter shifts in his chair. “It kinda just… happened that way. No way could I stay in Manhattan, and I considered the Bronx, but….” He lifts a shoulder, staring down at his empty plate. “Was kinda thinking I’d make my way out of the city eventually. Maybe try to stow away on a Metro North train up to Westchester or whatever and hitchhike it up to the Avengers facility? I don’t know. I thought laying low for a while would help, and maybe things would blow over eventually.”

Mr. Barnes and Mr. Wilson share a glance at that, and Peter doesn’t like that at all.

“Not likely to blow over eventually, huh,” he says weakly.

Mr. Wilson lets out a soft sigh. “The entire world has been through a lot of trauma in the past few years. Your reveal has been kind of… unifying. Divisive, but also unifying. A distraction from everything they’ve had to personally deal with. Most everyone is rallying behind Spider-Man. They like you, kid. It’s just….”

“The ugliest voices sometimes tend to be the loudest,” Mr. Barnes says.

Peter nods, but he can’t help the deep ache in his chest.

“We’ll help you get up to the Avengers facility,” Mr. Wilson says, standing. Mr. Barnes and Peter follow suit. “No worries on that, okay? We can’t pack up and leave right away, but soon.”

“You guys have already done enough for me…” Peter starts, but Mr. Barnes just gives him a Look. “All right, all right, fine—I’d appreciate that, thank you. But seriously, what _are_ you guys doing in this dump?”

“Bold statement coming from someone who’s been sleeping in some of New York’s finest dumpsters with roofs.” Peter scowls, but Mr. Wilson barrels on. “It’s temporary, if one could say that the definition of ‘temporary’ is ‘way longer than originally expected.’”

“One could say that it’s necessary until we have more intel,” Mr. Barnes shoots back from the kitchen.

Peter raises his eyebrows. “Intel?”

Mr. Wilson looks like he’s debating divulging any information. Finally he says, “We’ve been trying to break open a fencing operation. Real scumbags. They’ve been hard to pin down; probably learned some new tricks during the Blip that we haven’t caught on to yet. Just a matter of time, though.”

“Isn’t stalking some petty criminals a little below your pay grade?” Peter asks. “I mean—I guess I just thought you guys would be…”

“Saving the world from aliens? Stopping nuclear bombs?” Mr. Barnes steps out from the kitchen and turns off its buzzing fluorescent light. “Not every day is DEFCON 1. And I do like to sleep in sometimes.”

Peter has the good enough grace to look sheepish. “Right! Obviously. Of course. I mean, I’m the friendly neighborhood Spider-man, you know? Is there anything I can help you guys out with? I caught a weapons dealer, once. Cracked their whole operation wide open.”

Mr. Wilson snorts. “You watch too many movies. And, not sure if you’ve forgotten, but you’ve had a hard time keeping your own blood in you recently. Your only job right now is to heal up so your aunt doesn’t have a meltdown when we’re able to get you to the Avengers facility.”

“Probably way too late for that,” Peter quips. “C’mon, I can at least help you do some research while I’m laid up?”

Both men look at each other from across the small room, silent. Mr. Wilson’s lips twist. Mr. Barnes lifts a shoulder. Mr. Wilson rolls his eyes.

“Fine,” Mr. Wilson relents. “These guys are particularly shitty because they’re getting their hands on deliveries of critical medical equipment. Syringes, antibiotics, PPEs, even thermometers and gauze. I’m sure you know with half the world’s population popping back into existence, that kind of stuff is pretty scarce, and they’ve already been successful at intercepting larger quantities that were supposed to go to hospitals in the city. We _do_ know they’re working with someone dirty on the inside—we’ve narrowed it down to the warehouse distribution manager—and that this person coordinates piecemeal drops with the fence at specific locations in Queens and Long Island. We’re still working on locating the buyer and their guys, but we have a few ideas on where their hidey hole is.”

“Any chance I can take a look at any docs you’ve got? Like newspaper articles, photos, and stuff? Maybe something’ll ring a bell,” Peter says, and then tries as best he can to stifle a yawn.

Mr. Wilson gives a nod. “Plenty. But it is still the middle of the night, and you’re still healing, so we’ll pick this back up tomorrow.”

Peter doesn’t argue; he’s barely been awake an hour, yet he feels a deep exhaustion in his bones. But he has an overwhelming need to tell them one more thing before they all turn in. 

“Thank you,” he blurts out sincerely as they stand in the doorway, heading back to their own respective rooms. “You didn’t have to take the time to find me and help me. But you did. So… thank you.”

They both smile back at him. Mr. Barnes gives him a two-fingered salute and turns heel.

"You would’a done the same for us, kid,” Mr. Wilson says.

Peter’s sleep is easy and dreamless for the rest of the night.

*

Mr. Barnes, Peter learns, is an avid note taker.

Not so much in the traditional sense. Obviously leaving a paper trail while at the behest of a secret organization keen on toppling governments or otherwise violently manipulating the course of history would have been frowned upon. No no—there was code on top of code on top of code, Mr. Barnes’s own internal ciphers that he had created himself that Hydra had known nothing about, burning physical papers after the information was no longer needed, scrambling digital resources, and so on. Some of the language he had used mirrored CASE statements in SQL; Peter had taken a couple of coding courses the year prior and found the overlap fascinating.

Mr. Wilson also brought out a stack of decorated maps, filled with stars, X’s, and crisscrossing lines. He went over the details with Peter, tying in the locales with a couple of creased newspaper clippings. The infodump was enough for Peter to get a clearer understanding of what they’d been working on.

“And you guys have no idea where all this stuff is even going?” he asks.

Mr. Wilson bobs his head. “No specifics, but we’re guessing most of it’s being sold to the highest bidder on the black market. Maybe some of it going toward specific clientele for their own rations.”

Peter _hmm_ ’s, looking over a map of Queens. There’s no discernable pattern to where the few drops, pickups, and meetings have happened: warehouses, docks, even apartment buildings. He scans down Hunters Point Ave, brows furrowed.

And stops.

There’s an X on a warehouse close to Sunnyside, not far from St. Lawrence’s Basilica and soup kitchen.

“I was here!” he taps a finger on the map excitedly. “Got a great souvenir—” he gestures to his left side. “There were these guys—” His mouth falls open.

Mr. Barnes and Mr. Wilson look up from shuffling through papers, eyeing at him concernedly.

“Kid?” Mr. Barnes says.

“Holy shit,” Peter breathes. “One sec!”

He gingerly rushes to his backpack that’s leaning against the couch and pulls out his (now fully charged) phone.

“Karen, can you run audio playback from that day I had the run-in with the two guys at the warehouse?”

“Karen?” he hears Mr. Wilson ask distantly, but Peter’s phone is already springing to life. He lays it on the table in front of them both.

He’s both glad and annoyed with the lack of visuals—his phone was in his bag the entire time—as the experience was not something he necessarily wanted to relive. Thanks to Karen, though, the conversation he overheard before he got his ass kicked comes through loud and clear.

_“--supposed to be there at 3am, sharp. But I get a call from my guys this morning, saying it never showed. Now I gotta be here, checking in on your dumb ass, and I’m trying to figure out why that is.”_

_“It was there. Your idiots never showed. We waited a whole two hours for them, and then we packed up shop. But now I come back this morning, and the product is missing, Joe. So you tell me what the fuck that’s all about.”_

_"Are you implying I double-crossed you? C’mon, Mr. Magoo. How long we been in this game together? Huh? You really wanna ruin a good thing?”_

_“I want my product back, or I want double the payment for the shit you’re putting me through. In cash.”_

Karen, God bless her, shuts off the audio after that.

“That’s gotta be the same guys,” Peter says. “Right?”

“Certainly seems that way,” Mr. Barnes replies, deep in thought. “Their delivery was intercepted. By whom? We got competing groups just stealing from each other now?”

“And how did they find out where the drop would be?” Mr. Wilson shuffles through some papers for a few moments, eventually pulling out a newspaper clipping. “Your run-in at the warehouse was three days ago? There was a shipment stolen two days before that. And…” he leafs through one of Mr. Barnes’s notebooks, “that pattern looks to be consistent with the previous three instances. Drops always two days after the shipment was stolen.”

“Do they steal every delivery?” Peter asks.

“Thankfully no. Based on the info we’ve been able to get, it looks like every six days, or at least, that’s been the most recent pattern.”

“These idiots think no one’s gonna catch on to that?” Mr. Barnes mutters, scribbling something into another notebook.

“Probably. Shit like this has been running pretty uncontrolled since we got back,” Mr. Wilson says.

Peter looks over the maps again. “Every six days would mean another delivery would get picked off tomorrow. Can we go to the distribution warehouse to catch them in the act? Or if we can figure out where the drop will be, take out the buyer there?”

“’ _We_ ’ won’t be doing anything,” Mr. Wilson says, looking pointedly at Peter’s still-healing wound. “ _You_ will keep your ass planted here. Bucky and I will go check it out—from a distance,” he adds when Peter tries to protest. “We have no idea how many people are involved in this operation, and _certain_ track records of going in guns blazing have proven ineffective.”

Peter pouts. “You guys are no fun.” But then a thought pops in his head. “Hey! I can be your ‘guy in the chair’!”

Mr. Wilson squints at him. “Is that not what I just said?”

“No, no—like your handler! I can keep track of what’s going on and find any specific info you need while you’re doing your thing. That kind of stuff.”

Mr. Wilson glances over to Mr. Barnes, who shrugs.

“Couldn’t hurt.”

And so a little over 24 hours later, Peter finds himself equipped with an earpiece, matching Mr. Barnes and Mr. Wilson, who are just about in position at the distribution warehouse. He lays his phone toward the edge of the table, Karen at the ready.

“So? How’s it lookin’?” he asks, scanning over the notes again about the dirty distribution manager. “Any nefarious goings-on yet?”

“All quiet so far,” Mr. Wilson murmurs. “I count ten—no, eleven persons in the facility. Second shift is just leaving, and third shift is coming on in a few.”

It’s quiet for a bit, and then Mr. Barnes says, “I’ve got eyes on the distribution manager. He’s alone… looks like he’s checking out a manifest.”

“Second shift is out; third shift is in. If there’s anyone working with him, we’re about to find out,” says Mr. Wilson.

Peter thinks. “Karen, can you access the shift schedule for tonight?” he asks.

“I can,” she says, and suddenly his phone lights up, scrolling through photo IDs of the workers all by itself, which is a little freaky. The images settle on six faces in a grid, a timesheet below them.

Peter’s heart stops in his chest.

One of them is the older man from the warehouse fight. The one who stabbed him. The one who got away.

“Uh—” he breathes, a very, very bad feeling growing in his gut. “Mr. Barnes, Mr. Wilson—how many persons are currently in the facility?”

“Five,” says Mr. Barnes, immediately picking up on the change in Peter’s voice. “Why, kid? What’s up?”

_Oh no._

“Carl Lopez,” he says, panicked. “He—”

He doesn’t get a chance to explain. Instead, his senses spike so hard and so suddenly that he groans a little, and he shoots up from his chair.

He hears glass breaking behind him, but he doesn’t even stop to look. He grabs his backpack as quickly as he can and unceremoniously shoves all the notebooks and papers on the table into the bag.

There’s a hissing noise and a thick fog envelops the apartment almost immediately.

“Peter! Goddammit—tell us what’s happening!” Oh, Mr. Barnes sounds just as panicked as he feels. Not good, not good.

“He’s here—” is all he can say before his senses scream again, telling him to _move now_.

Bullets spray into the wall right where he’d been standing a moment before. The fog is thick and cloying, and he struggles not to cough and give away his position. He tries to will his senses to chill out for a _minute_ so he can focus—

Through a curtain of haze, he sees—

_Beck, it’s Beck, swirling green fog, giant shattered mirrors surrounding him, reflecting Peter in his suit, but his face mask is torn off, completely ripped away for everyone to see—_

He squeezes his eyes shut. Opens them again.

The older man—Carl—stands a few feet in front of him with quiet, terrifying intensity.

He raises a handgun directly at Peter and shoots.


	5. Chapter 5

Back when Ned had recently discovered Peter’s alter ego and all the abilities that came with, their movie nights were rife with questions about what he was potentially physically capable of.

“Yo,” Ned had said as they watched Tom Cruise hang on for dear life outside a rapidly accelerating airplane. “Could you do that?”

Peter didn’t even look his way, placing his open palm on a nearby remote. “Duh,” he said, twisting his hand sideways. The remote stayed in place. “Sticky hands.”

And during one of their many Jackie Chan movie marathons, Peter remembers both of them hissing in sympathy over the insane stunts.

“Okay,” Ned had said. “What about running on top of a moving bus, jumping to another moving bus, then jumping on top of _another_ moving bus, and then launching yourself from that moving bus through a large glass window?”

Peter had grinned at him, mouth full of sour gummy worms. “I totally did the bus thing last week.”

“ _Dude_ ,” Ned had said.

Still, there were more than a good handful of things that he’d be happy to let lie and leave to movie special effects.

Like dodging bullets, Matrix style.

It was just like on the bridge in London. Pure and total control. His senses like a physical thing, guiding every molecule of his being. Exerting just the right amount of energy needed to whip himself sideways, one eye on the bullet fired not ten feet away from him.

The ear-shatteringly loud bang of the gun in such a small area and the bewildered silence that followed was almost comical.

“Holy shit,” Peter breathes. He _could not wait_ to tell Ned about that one.

“Goddammit, kid, you better answer me in the next three seconds or I’m gonna murder you myself,” he hears faintly. He quickly reaches up to his ear and finds the earpiece missing. Must’ve fallen out somewhere from the force of, you know, dodging a freaking bullet.

Carl does _not_ look happy and takes aim to fire at him again.

Peter doesn’t know how many of those he has in him, so he moves.

“I’m fine Mr. Barnes, just one sec!” he shouts, hoping he’s heard, while at the same time closing in on Carl, bouncing from wall to wall. Carl waves his gun and tries to follow, firing off another shot -- _ugh, won’t anyone think of people with superhearing!_ – but it goes wild.

Peter lands right in front of Carl, who is bug-eyed and gritting his teeth in rage.

“Hey! Aren’t you supposed to be at work? You could get fired for playing hookie!” Peter says and immediately punches Carl in the face.

The man goes down like a sack of bricks, but Peter’s not out of the woods yet. He can hear a couple of lackeys, at least three, very close by. He takes the gun out of Carl’s limp hand, scoops up his backpack, and scans the floor for his earpiece. He finds it in the corner and pops it back in.

“Carl,” he says with no preamble. “One of the guys who was supposed to be on that shift. He was also at the warehouse. He found me, but I—I stopped him. There’s still a couple of guys here.”

“Get out of there,” Mr. Wilson says sharply. “We’re about twenty minutes out. Just find somewhere safe to hole up for now.”

“On it. Mr. Barnes, I got your notebooks. I’ll let you know when I’m safe.”

He hears Mr. Barnes huff a very small laugh. “Good job, kid. Check in as soon as you can.”

The comm goes silent.

*

Not much later, he lands on the roof of a Duane Reed and tries to catch his breath. His side is throbbing again in time with his heartbeat – apparently not as healed up as he thought it was.

He grimaces and checks for blood. He had dug his web shooters out of his bag while swiftly moving out of the apartment and ran almost face-to-face with, surprise, yet another person trying to kill him. The guy was quicker to react than Peter gave him credit for and nearly sprayed him full of bullet holes, but Peter ripped the semi-automatic out of his hands and thrust the heel of his palm up onto the guy’s nose. The guy had shrieked, blood spattering everywhere, and Peter took the opportunity to web him up. The other two were quick to find and incapacitate as well, and then he got the hell out of Dodge.

Blood seeps along the gauze and bandage; fiery electric pain ripples from his side, and he isn’t able to quite swallow back the whimper that escapes.

He breathes, breathes, breathes. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Until he’s not so dizzy anymore and can handle conversation.

He taps the earpiece. “Okay. I’m safe. Left everyone all webbed up back at the apartment.”

There’s a pause. “You sure you’re okay, Pete?” Mr. Wilson asks.

“Yeah! Yeah. Totally. All good.” He looks again at the bandages in the moonlight, more red than white. “Um. So where are you guys?”

They meet up near the docks, in the shadow of massive pieces of construction equipment and dumpsters, which is great, since these days, Peter’s default is constantly checking his surroundings for security cameras.

“Lemme see,” is the first thing Mr. Barnes says.

Peter cocks his head, as if confused, but can’t help the flush that spreads across his cheeks. “See? See, uh, see what?”

Mr. Barnes just stands there, arms crossed.

Peter lets his shoulders slump, and he raises his shirt to show them his side.

Mr. Barnes makes a noise of disapproval. “Gonna have a hard time healing at this rate.”

“Hey, how was I supposed to know I’d be chased down yet again by people who want to kill me? Cool ‘safe house,’ by the way.” He can’t help the sarcasm. He’s tired, and the pain is making him feel all out of sorts.

“You’re right. Sorry, kid.” Mr. Barnes shakes his head and then sighs. “We need to get to Staten Island.”

“What’s in Staten Island?” Mr. Wilson asks.

Mr. Barnes starts heading towards a couple of junky cars parked in the lot. They follow. “Somewhere else we can lay low and figure out our next moves.”

“You have _another_ safe house?” Peter says. “What are you, paranoid or something?”

“Or something,” Mr. Barnes says, inspecting the cars. He moves to rusted silver Oldsmobile. Peter watches as he manipulates the lock with a tool from his pocket, and the neat _snick_ of the manual lock turning over is heard.

“Probably need to do something about the fellas at the apartment,” Mr. Wilson says as they climb in. Mr. Barnes uses his metal arm to pull off the compartment covering the wiring like its aluminum foil, and Peter has to clamp his mouth shut so as to not say something embarrassing about how freaking cool that is.

Mr. Barnes fiddles with the wiring. “I’ll drop you guys off and then swing back by to pick up our stuff and see if they have any info they’d like to divulge.”

After a few minutes, the car finally coughs to life, and it’s a harrowing 45 minute drive, as the car rumbles and shakes and doesn’t so much drive as careens to Staten Island.

They dump the car about a mile from the hideout and walk the rest of the way, sticking to the shadows and back alleys. Peter is sweating again by the time they make it to shithole #2, lips pursed to keep back the potential for any humiliating noises to slip out.

The place looks so similar to the apartment they abandoned that Peter wonders if he imagined the past few hours. He zeros in on the couch, wanting more than anything to collapse on it and close his eyes.

“There should be some non-perishable rations in the kitchen cabinets and a first aid kit in the bathroom,” Mr. Barnes says before heading back out. “I’ll be back in an hour or two.”

Peter follows behind Mr. Wilson to the bathroom and isn’t surprised but is still thoroughly grossed out when he spots at least three dead roaches. Mr. Wilson follows his gaze and shudders.

“I’d take camel spiders over roaches any day of the week,” he says.

When the bandage and gauze is pulled away, the wound doesn’t look as bad as he feared. Still not great, but the pus and redness is definitely receding. Mr. Wilson helps him clean up the blood and patches him back up.

“You doin’ okay?” he asks as they put away the first aid kit. “You’ve really been put through the ringer lately.”

Peter thinks about how achingly bad he wants things to go back to normal. And not even last-six-months normal. He wants pre-Thanos, pre-Blip normal. He wants to do his homework in the afternoons and go out as Spider-Man in the evenings. He wants to be the friendly, neighborhood hero who still fantasizes about fighting alongside with the Avengers.

He would give anything to call Mr. Stark one more time, even if it was just to be chastised.

Classic Monkey’s Paw scenario. Fighting alongside the Avengers got him nothing but being turned into dust and people he loved dead.

“Uh,” he says finally. “Not, uh, not great, honestly. Kinda still working on just processing the fact that I went to space? But there’s been, like, an avalanche of other far more pressing issues, so… I don’t know. I’m just trying to focus on the here and now, I guess.”

Mr. Wilson nods, looking at him squarely in the eyes. Peter tries not to flinch away. “You’re a good kid, Peter. You’ve got a lot of people who care about you, even if it may not feel like it right now. We’ll figure this out.” He pauses, thinking. “Would you feel up to maybe reaching out to your aunt or your friends?”

He feels like his heart might explode, it’s beating so hard. “W—how? I mean, yes! More than anything.” But then he deflates almost just as quickly. “But what about the guys who found us? How _did_ they find us? Wouldn’t that put us at risk again?”

“I have a one-use burner you can use. To be safe, the conversation will still need to be short, but I think we’ll be on the move again pretty soon anyway. As for those guys… Bucky and I think they were maybe following us from the start. When we picked you up, in the alley. They were just waiting for the opportune moment.”

Peter feels a little nauseous at that. Despite all his precautions, he still hadn’t been able to completely disappear. And for all he knows, they might still be tracking him now.

He pushes that down for now. He never thought he’d get the opportunity to say that he trusted the Falcon and the Winter Soldier with his life, but he did. If Mr. Wilson was allowing this one brief moment of respite, he’d be an idiot not to take it.

“I think—I really want to call May,” he says.

Mr. Wilson grabs the burner and hands it to him. “Fifteen minutes,” he says, almost apologetically.

Peter dials his aunt’s number, heart hammering in his chest.

One ring. Two rings. Three; four…

And then finally: “Hello?”

The despair and homesickness and fear that he’s tried to keep clamped down almost bowls him over.

“Is someone there?” she asks hesitantly.

“May,” he chokes out. “May, it’s me. I’m so so sorry—”

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh Peter, baby, oh my god—” he hears a clamoring in the background. “Baby, are you okay? Where are you? I can come get you right now, just tell me where you are—”

“May,” his voice cracks, and he wipes hot tears from his cheek. “I’m okay. I’m okay, I swear. I’m safe. I can’t—I’m with some people right now who are helping me. They’re helping me stay safe, okay? We can’t come right now, but they’re gonna take me to you as soon as they can.”

“Peter…” he can hear every tone of anguish in her voice, and it kills him. “Everything that’s happened… are you sure? I just—I had no idea if you were still—still even alive—”

“I know,” he says, taking a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m so sorry to put you through that.”

“No, no… don’t be sorry. I’m just—it’s so good to hear your voice.” He can tell she’s trying to fight back her sobs. “And if I ever see Jameson, I’ll—I’ll murder him in broad daylight, in front of God and everyone.”

Peter huffs a little laugh at that. “I know you would.”

May sniffles, trying to compose herself. “Speaking of… lemme actually—one sec…” He hears a muffled noise, and then: “Can you hear me okay? I just put you on speaker. I’m at the Avengers compound upstate. Pepper has been working around the clock to try and get the situation under control.”

“Peter,” Ms. Potts greets him. Just hearing her voice makes him feel almost at ease. If there were anyone to have on his side, it would be CEO and certified ass-kicker Pepper Potts who eats reporters for breakfast. “I’m glad you’re okay. Like your aunt said, I’ve been working with some of our best attorneys at Stark Industries to get your name cleared. It’s going to take some time, but I think we’ve got a workable solution. I’m sure you have a lot on your mind right now, so just know that we’re in your corner, okay?”

“Thank you,” he whispers, all choked up again. “You probably have a ton of other things going on just besides all this, so—so I really appreciate it.”

“Peter!” he hears in the background, and then, “Shh, Ned!”

His heart soars. “Ned? MJ? Oh my god – are you guys there too?”

“Yeah, been staying up here for over a week now! The press was crazy, man—once they found out your ‘close associates,’ they were hounding us day and night until May’s boyfriend picked us up—”

“What Ned means to say,” MJ interjects, “is that we’re so, so happy you’re okay and that we were really worried about you.”

“Absolutely, dude, I almost had a panic attack when I saw the news. And you would not _believe_ the texts I got from Flash—I can’t wait to show them to you.”

“Peter,” May jumps in. “You sure you’re okay? And that you’re safe? Can you at least tell us who you’re with?”

He has no idea if Mr. Wilson and Mr. Barnes would prefer to not be named dropped in this discussion, so he thinks a moment and says, “I’m with two friends who I met at the airport in Germany.”

Ms. Potts must nod or give some indication of approval to May. “Okay, baby. I trust you. I just—please stay safe. I can’t…. Just—maybe try to keep in touch, if you can?”

“I’ll try.” Mr. Wilson steps back into the room, then, a rueful look on his face. Peter rubs his eyes and takes another deep breath. “I have to go. But I’ll make it up there as soon as I can.”

“Okay. I love you, Peter.”

“I love you too, May.”

He hangs up and hands the phone back to Mr. Wilson, feeling a weariness that stretches down to his bones.

“We’ll shake these guys, okay? You’ll be back with them before you know it.” Mr. Wilson pats him once on the shoulder and helps him stand. “Why don’t you catch up on some rest while we wait for Bucky, huh? I’ll even let you have dibs on the bed.”

Sleeping on a bed for the first time in almost two weeks sounds so good he might just start crying all over again.

But before he can even make it two steps toward the bedroom, the front door swings open.

Mr. Barnes looks… well, unhappy would be the world’s biggest understatement. And Peter, with a sinking feeling, knows it’s still going to be a while before he gets to indulge in sleep. He watches the door slam shut with more force than Mr. Barnes probably intended.

“We’ve got a problem.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took forever - I blame depression and then election anxiety and then the holidays.

“I—I don’t understand. That’s never happened before. I always double-check the webbing. Are you sure? I don’t—” he grits his teeth and squeezes his eyes shut, both furious with himself and embarrassed; he’s sure his face is beet red.

“Hey, stop,” Mr. Wilson says. “Don’t go blaming yourself. You’re more than capable of handling yourself, even injured, _especially_ injured. Who knows; maybe they sent someone else to come and free them.”

Peter wants to snip back something about not patronizing him, but he just exhales through his nose instead. “Maybe,” he says finally.

“Peter.” Mr. Barnes sounds deadly serious, and Peter’s eyes involuntarily snap up to look at him. “You did exactly what you were supposed to. Incapacitated them and went to ground. We all had to get out of there.” He gestures to the notebooks Peter had snagged before escaping. “And now we have a lot more to go on. Names. Faces. I’ve done more with a lot less.”

“Didn’t look like you were managing with ‘less’ before I came along.” The words are out of Peter’s mouth before his brain catches up, but he finds one corner of his mouth lifting in a small smile.

“Punk-ass little…” Mr. Wilson grumbles. “We were _getting_ there.”

They dive into the notebooks, Peter writing out every single detail he can remember, sketching faces as best he can. By the time the faintest hints of dawn color the sky, he’s completely wrung out, mentally and physically. Mr. Wilson must have seen his thousand-yard stare at the current notebook he was writing in and flips it closed.

“Let’s get a quick look at those bandages again and then off to bed with you, kiddo. No more stunts from you for at least 12 hours.”

“I dodged a bullet,” Peter hums as he’s frog-marched to the bathroom. Mr. Wilson’s grip tightens on his shoulder.

“Pardon?”

Peter shrugs with barely enough energy to lift his shoulders. “Didn’t know I could do that either.”

The harsh fluorescents in the bathroom reveal that the bandages are still doing their job; he tries not to flinch when they pull against the tender, puffy skin.

The bedroom is dark and smells a little musty, but the bed, with sheets and comforter that look like they were purchased from a sidewalk vendor in Union Square, is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

Mr. Wilson most definitely does not tuck him in, but instead flicks off the lights and gives a small, quick smile before shutting the bedroom door.

With the swirling haze of sleep descending upon him, he hears a sigh from the other room and something that sounds like _kid’s gonna be the death of me_ before he falls asleep.

*

heart pounding

running as fast as his screaming muscles will take him, but the ice-cold adrenaline and pure panic thrumming in his veins isn’t enough

they’re going to _find him_

just over his shoulder now, the shuddery, crawling feeling of being chased, his senses blaring like a klaxon

it’s not enough

he’ll never be able to do enough

he slams into a wall made of swirling, dark green smoke and cracked glass

beck’s grin illuminating the darkness

a voice, his voice, echoing, loud enough to shake his bones—

 _you’ll never be able to do enough_ —

Something clangs not far away, and he jolts upright.

For many moments, more than he’s comfortable with, his cotton-stuffed brain and bleary eyes can’t dredge up a comprehension of where exactly he is, or even what day it is, for that matter.

He scans the room. Midmorning sun filters in through dirty, curtain-less windows. Quiet voices not far away. He was running, he was—

_BECK_

He springs from the bed to the furthest corner of the room, purely reactionary, scrunching down to the floor, shielding himself with his arms.

The left side of his torso makes its displeasure at the movement known, a sharp and fiery pain that radiates like a flame, and his head _pounds_.

But—no.

He’s somewhere in Staten Island with Bucky Barnes and Sam Wilson. His identity has been outed. Beck is dead.

Beck is—

His eyes feel like sandpaper, and shoving his knuckles into them doesn’t help much.

“He’s dead,” Peter says faintly into his hands. Can’t invoke his name when he can still see the dream playing out beat-by-beat in his head.

He straightens, tries his best to gather his composure and not look like someone a heartbeat away from a panic attack, and opens the door.

Mr. Barnes and Mr. Wilson both swing their heads back to look at him at the same time from where they sit at a card table.

“What are you doing up?” Mr. Wilson says. “You’ve barely been asleep five hours.”

Peter shakes his head, still not totally trusting himself to speak about it much. “Can’t.”

Mr. Barnes eyes him for a long moment, and then finally says, “Breakfast? I think you’re good to move on from just toast.”

Despite his churning stomach, his mouth waters. “That sounds great, yeah. I can grab something—”

Mr. Barnes points at his now-unoccupied chair. “Sit. Sam needs to catch you up on what we found.”

“You found them?” he asks, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice.

“Not them, no.” Sam slides a beat-up laptop his direction, the screen barely hanging on the hinges. “We decided to go in at another angle.” The screen shows a couple of pixelated CCTV shots of a woman at various locations. Peter squints to try and make out her face.

“This is Amina Khoury. Thirty-six, last known to be residing in Queens. Prior to the Blip, she was an intensive care nurse, traveled a bit with the Peace Corps, that sort of stuff.”

“And after?” Peter prompts when Mr. Wilson pauses.

“She didn’t blip,” he says. “Obviously record keeping during all that wasn’t top priority, so we’re not really sure what she’s been up to since then. She pops up now and again working stints at shelters, schools, outpatient clinics… but other than footage from security cams, she’s generally off the radar.”

“Okay,” Peter says, a little confused. “Is she part of the fencing operation? Someone on the inside?”

He looks at Mr. Wilson when there’s no response. The man’s lips are pursed as he stares at the laptop screen. “Kinda looks like the opposite, actually,” he finally says.

A plate drops on the table in front of Peter piled high with scrambled eggs, two plain Poptarts, and a giant sesame bagel covered in cream cheese.

“Slowly,” Mr. Barnes says, pointing a finger at him like he’s training an unruly pet. “You start to feel sick, you stop eating.”

Peter nods vigorously, half a Poptart already shoved into his mouth.

“Your encounter at the warehouse—they were arguing over missing goods,” Mr. Barnes says.

“Your little AI friend in your phone played the recording for us again. At first we thought—typical idiot criminals. One of them either lost the shipment or was lying about the fact that the goods were in place and ready to be moved. But apparently this isn’t the first time this has happened. And at each drop where goods have gone missing,” Mr. Wilson points a finger at the screen, “Ms. Khoury pops up close by.”

He’s about to finish off the bagel, but his jaw drops a little instead. “Oh my god. She’s straight up Robin Hood-ing them.”

“That’s one theory, yes,” Mr. Barnes says. “Won’t know for sure until we talk with her.”

“Any idea where she might be?”

Mr. Wilson opens another tab with an employment record. “Last known place of work was a volunteer clinic in Harlem. Wouldn’t hurt to scope it out.”

“Awesome,” Peter says, scraping the last bit of eggs together with this fork. “I’m ready whenever you guys are!”

Mr. Wilson leans back in his chair, arms crossed. “Not to be a killjoy, but aren’t you supposed to be on the run?”

Just the mention of it makes his anxiety churn. He pushes it down. “I mean, yeah, but… this is serious. These guys need to be stopped, and if there’s anything I can do to help, then I want to be there, on the run or no.”

Mr. Wilson flicks a glance at Mr. Barnes, eyebrow raised, and then looks back at Peter. “Sure you wouldn’t mind trying to get a little more sleep?”

He huffs, starting to get annoyed. “I’m fine, _Mom_ ; promise.”

Mr. Barnes cackles at that, so suddenly that Peter jumps in surprise. Mr. Wilson shoots daggers at him.

“How about you make yourself useful and get our shit together so we can get on the road, asshole,” he grumps. Mr. Barnes picks up Peter’s empty plate and heads to the kitchen, chuckling and repeating _mom_ in a near-giddy euphoria.

Mr. Wilson sighs. “C’mon, kid,” he says, “I think I’ve got a hat and some sunglasses around here somewhere that you can borrow.”

Peter doubts that a hat and sunglasses are really gonna do much, but it’s better than nothing. They leave the apartment together and find another dump of a car that Mr. Barnes hotwires. “Borrowing” so many cars within a certain radius is a risk, he tells them as the engine roars to life, but it would be much easier to spot Peter’s face on public transportation with security cameras alone, so car it is.

They park on an industrial side street near the Harlem River. The sky is gray with low clouds – not conducive for sunglasses – and puddles in the pockmarked asphalt reflect the surrounding buildings.

The clinic is pretty nondescript; old, boring, but mostly maintained. It’s sandwiched between a bodega and a laundromat, and a flyer on the window announces that flu vaccines are now available.

They enter through the double doors to find a waiting room jam-packed with people. Nearly all seats are taken, and the room echoes with coughs, murmurs, and quiet moans.

Mr. Barnes immediately strides up to the front desk that’s currently unmanned. On the chipped linoleum counter sits a check-in sheet, which he snatches up, flipping back a couple of pages.

Peter watches, as after a few moments, he’s seemingly satisfied, setting the sheet back down. He folds long-sleeved arms and gloved hands in front of his chest, right leg bouncing a little; an air of impatience and worry.

It’s then that a harried-looking woman rushes back to her spot at the front desk, frantically typing away at her computer for a few moments before looking up at them.

“Um, hi,” she says, tucking flyaways behind her ear. “You’ll need to sign in if you haven’t already, and I’ll need to see some form of identification when I… get a sec.”

“I need to see Ms. Khoury,” and Peter has to bite down on his cheek in surprise, not expecting the pleading tone to come out of the Winter Soldier’s mouth. “Please, it’s urgent.”

The woman, however, is undeterred, her brow furrowing. “Ms. Khoury is with another patient right now. You’ll have to wait your turn like everyone else here.”

“Please,” Mr. Barnes pleads again. “It’s my—it’s my little brother.” Peter nearly yelps as Mr. Barnes pulls him forward. “Ever since we came in last week and he was prescribed that medication, he’s been having all sorts of problems with his vision, and the rash, God, the rash, you should see it—”

“When were you in?” The woman interrupts, panic starting to show on her face again.

“Last Thursday. Michael and Andy Baker? Please, ma’am, I just gotta make sure my little brother is okay—”

“Okay, just—” she waves a hand, gesturing to the waiting area, “gimme a minute, I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you, so much, really appreciate it, thank you,” Mr. Barnes says earnestly, throwing a smile her way that makes him look about ten years younger.

“Laying it on a little thick, don’t you think?” Mr. Wilson mutters as they retreat to a less crowded area of the waiting room.

Mr. Barnes shrugs. “Worked, didn’t it?”

They don’t have to wait long; a man comes from the back, gingerly holding a newly-bandaged hand in front of him, and not long after, a woman in mint green scrubs steps out.

“Mr. Baker?” she inquires, squinting at them.

“Hi, yes—could we go somewhere a little more private?” The back of Peter’s neck prickles as Amina’s gaze rests on him for a few long moments. “This rash he has from the medication is absolutely out of control…”

She says nothing for a few seconds, and Peter’s heart sinks; their ruse is up, she’ll call the cops, and he’ll be on the run, _again_ —

“Follow me,” she finally says and turns, not waiting to see if they do.

They trail behind her down scuffed hallways, twisting this way and that, until they come to an unoccupied room. She closes the door behind them and rests her hand on a manual fire alarm pull station just above the light switch.

“Try anything stupid and a whole lot of people are gonna know,” she says, her voice steady and blunt.

Mr. Wilson raises his palms slightly. “We’re not here to hurt you,” he says calmly. “We just have a few questions about some recent… shipments.”

Her eyes widen slightly at that, but no other tells give her away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t bother,” Mr. Wilson says. “We know you’ve been hanging around a lot of the same drop points where medical supplies have mysteriously gone missing. Medical supplies that were initially stolen by someone else. Been using them for your own needs? Maybe selling them to the highest bidder so you can get your own slice of the pie?”

“ _No_ ,” she snaps. “I don’t—I’m not—I don’t know what you’re talking out,” she repeats, and Peter can tell she’s trying to force the furious look on her face to something more neutral.

“Hm.” Mr. Wilson pulls out his phone and shows her one of the CCTV screen captures. It’s blurry and discolored, but there’s no mistaking the resemblance. “So I guess if anyone saw these, they would just assume it’s coincidence, right? You in the same locations that a couple hundred thousand dollar’s worth of precious, life-saving medical equipment disappear?”

It’s a dirty move, and Ms. Khoury knows it too. Her chest heaves as she stares at the small screen, saying nothing.

The silence is too much, and Peter can’t take it anymore.

“We’re not the bad guys!” he blurts out, taking off his sunglasses. She starts, her eyes wide. He takes off the hat too, all pretenses gone.

“You’re—” she breathes.

“Yeah,” he says, and swallows. “Please, Ms. Khoury, don’t pull the alarm. We’re just here to help. We’re trying to find and stop these guys.”

“I thought you looked familiar… but I just didn’t…” she shakes her head and then stares at him straight on, unblinking. “They’re lying, aren’t they? You didn’t really…?”

He can’t meet her eyes. He looks away, nodding.

“Okay,” she says seemingly to herself. “Okay. Yes. I’ve been—taking those shipments. But not for me,” she hurries to clarify. “You have no idea… you have no idea how bad things are. How desperate people are, and how mismanaged everything has been since the Blip. The fact that these shipments have gone missing at all and that there’s been no formal inquiries into it just shows the crumbling infrastructure within the local government, and meanwhile people are _dying_ , people are—” Her jaw clenches, and her voice is venom. “I couldn’t just do nothing.”

“How did you find out about the missing shipments? And the drop points?” Mr. Barnes asks.

“Job market is kind of shit right now.” She gives a lopsided smile. “I pick up shifts at Mount Sinai when they’re available, but I bounce around to a lot of places like this. After the third instance of a missed distribution, I had a gut feeling something was wrong. I just… started researching. Tracing things back to the source. Pretty easy to do once you start seeing a pattern. These guys are as ballsy as they are stupid.

“As for the drop points… that took a bit more risk. My brother used to work in IT security, and he helped me put together a phishing email. We sent it to people who we thought were involved. Sure enough, a few of them took the bait. We got user codes, locations, names, dockets; the works. And then not long after, someone on their team noticed the data breach. We had to scrub a lot of trails that could have led back to us. That was three months ago. The last shipment we intercepted was the final one we knew about from the info we were able to get.”

“And you’ve been successful in intercepting all of them?” Mr. Wilson asks, leaning against the desk space behind him.

“As much as we wanted to, no,” she says. “We didn’t want to show our hand even further, and we were physically incapable of moving goods at some of the drop points.” She pauses, a pained look on her face. “It kills me that we didn’t. I wanted all that equipment. There’s inadequate care already with so many people suddenly popping back into existence, but especially in neighborhoods like this, Black and Brown communities get next to nothing. I tried to distribute the equipment as best I could, but that kind of responsibility is just… it’s just too much.”

They’re all silent for a few moments. “We’ll take care of them,” Peter breaks the silence, hoping his voice sounds stronger than how he feels at the moment. “It’s incredible what you’ve done—seriously,” he says when she gives him a cynical look.

“I was just doing what was right. When you have an opportunity presented to you to help other people, you take it, you know?” She snorts, smiling a little. “What am I saying? Of course you know.”

He blushes a little and feels something a little like hope ignite in his chest.


End file.
